Dignidad
Video installation, 2002 / 53 min in loop / Screen on floor 400 x 300 cm, cushions / MAMBA - Museo de Arte Moderna, Buenos Aires.
Dignidad [Dignity] is a ULA (Universal Local Art) project made with inhabitants of the city of Buenos Aires. It is also the first part of a video filmed on three continents: South America, Africa and Europe. The advertisement for the shoot read thus: “Come in your best coat, with a tune or a song.” Because of the economically dramatic situation of the country, some people “forgot” their best coat and turned up in their “dignified finery”. Dignity—a forgotten word—opens up the ambiguous space of looking at oneself and at the world. They look at us, gathered here like characters in a strange and abstract scene. The music talks, fills in empty gaps and replaces missing words. Belly dancers fill the screen; men flirt with one another; an Indian meal, prepared like a gift, is set down on knees; Callas’s voice responds to Lou Reed’s; a girl stretches out her arms, blind, her face covered with a bit of wool; Mercedes Sosa echoes Paolo Milanes; a father sings; an old lady in fishnet stockings hesitantly performs the steps of a tango. In the silence, the son of a disappeared person reads out the names of the criminals. “Just a Perfect Day.”